We examined how people's emotional experience in the wake of past donation decisions affect their future decisions. Building upon emotion-as-information theories we hypothesized and found that past affective reactions serve as a feedback system in predicting future donation decisions. In five studies, by manipulating or measuring participants' affective reaction in the wake of past decisions to donate (or not), we found that feeling good about the past decision encouraged them to respond in similar fashion to a subsequent appeal. Conversely, when participants felt bad about their decision in response to a donation appeal in the past, they were likely to take the opposite course of action. This pattern occurred irrespective of the perceived importance of the donation cause or social desirability. A similar pattern was obtained in Study 6—a longitudinal, online study, that simulated a “real life” situation, in which participants were asked for a donation on two separate occasions. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

我们研究了人们在过去的捐赠决定之后的情感体验如何影响他们未来的决定。建立在情感即信息的基础上我们假设并发现过去的情感反应作为预测未来捐赠决策的反馈系统的理论。在五项研究中，通过操纵或测量参与者在过去决定捐赠（或不捐赠）后的情感反应，我们发现对过去的决定感觉良好会鼓励他们以类似的方式回应随后的呼吁。相反，当参与者对过去响应捐赠呼吁的决定感到不满时，他们可能会采取相反的行动。无论捐赠事业的重要性或社会愿望如何，这种模式都会发生。在研究 6 中获得了类似的模式——一项纵向、在线研究，模拟了“现实生活”的情况，参与者被要求在两个不同的场合捐款。